Hello again! M., your incredibly remiss guest-poster here again with a foray into the cold of space during this sultry last week of August.

Recently, I had the pleasure of a visit from Lovely Lola, which was outstanding fun. Unfortunately, I also had an unpleasant run-in with the couch of doom, which has left my back in such a state that I cannot stand for more than an hour without wanting to scream. What’s a nerd to do when faced with lots of uninterrupted hours of immobility in bed? Watch Star Trek!

courtesy of Treknews.com

This past July, Netflix sealed a deal with CBS allowing for the availability of every Star Trek series – except The Animated Series and, oddly, Deep Space Nine – on instant viewing. In the last two months, I’ve been making my way through some themed playlists as an approach to the 700+ episodes on hand: time-travel, alternate universes, heavy-handed moralism, etc. So, about 30 minutes into cataloguing the imperfections of my ceiling, I queued up one of my favorite Next Generation episodes from my childhood, “The Outcast.” Not a good idea! It is really too true what they say about not stepping into the same river twice. After a once-through of “The Outcast,” I wanted to go back and raise an incredulous eyebrow at my ten-year-old self. Really? This is your favorite?

Choosing this is slightly disingenuous, because it is the only work I know by this 15th-century Welsh lady poet about whom little is known.

The name of the poem is “Cywydd y Cedor.” Because of translation issues, it is known by several names in English, including “The Female Genitals, “An Ode to Pubic Hair, and “Pussy Song.” It is kind of awesome, in the more traditional sense of that over-used word. Enjoy, after the jump.

Here in New York City it has started to drizzle and the air pressure is so low that my ears and sinuses are aching ferociously. PhDork and I live on relatively high ground, so we are not among the 370,000 people under mandatory evacuation order. But there has never been a mandatory evacuation before, nor have the commuter rail and subway systems ever been shut down completely like this (they stop rolling at noon today and no one quite knows when they’ll start up again). The authorities are prepared for some serious shizz. I have lots of water, food, and various supplies set aside, plus a hand-cranked radio. If the power stays on, PhDork and I may have a movie party tomorrow. If not, I will kick it old-school with candles and books.

Most of us Harpies are battening down the hatches here on the East Coast in anticipation of Hurricane Irene, but rather than fan the flames of worst-case-scenario-ism or offer “tips,” I’m going full-fledged into the business of distraction. It is called a Fun Thread. Also, I just restarted an anti-depressant (Wellbutrin XL, holla!), and holy shit, my brain is flooding with dopamine. I’m kinda high on it, actually.*

Regardless, I’ve actually been thinking this one over for a while now: how to phrase it so as to be fun and a bit cheeky, but not exploitative or alienating or pervy or gross for our awesome array of readers.

This week the attempted rape case against French politician and former IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn was dropped by the Manhattan district attorney’s office. There were protests outside criminal court downtown on Monday and Tuesday, led by City Councilwoman Letitia James and a broad coalition of feminist activists and victim advocacy groups.

In the simplest terms, the Manhattan DA did not believe his office could make the case against DSK. That is a far, far different thing than saying the crime didn’t happen. Regardless, I believe Nafissatou Diallo. Her story—that she walked into a room and encountered a complete stranger who attacked and injured her—is far more credible than DSK’s version of events, in which a woman, in the course of doing her daily work, decided in a split-second to consent to a rough sex act with a complete stranger, a man who, by many accounts, has a history of predatory and violent behavior towards women. DSK’s story does not make sense, and the reason it does not make sense is that it is not true.

Because his semen was on Diallo’s clothing and in the hotel room, DSK was forced into the “admit what you can’t deny” defense. He and his attorneys had no option but to attack the credibility of his victim. It turned out to be a successful strategy, because Nafissatou Diallo has not lived a blameless life. She lied about being gang-raped in order to gain asylum, which, as Suketu Mehta described in a recent New Yorker article, does happen, because politically motivated gang-rape of women in West Africa is common enough that the INS considers it a legitimate threat. It appears she was not always been honest with the authorities—not a surprising thing for someone raised in a society where the authorities are neither trustworthy nor benevolent. She may have participated in money-laundering. None of this, however, means that DSK didn’t rape her. It only means that a jury might think she’s predisposed to lying.

But you know who else hasn’t lived a blameless life and is predisposed to lying? Dominique Strauss-Kahn. He is currently facing separate charges of attempted rape in France, charges filed after Nafissatou Diallo came forward but based on an attack that allegedly occurred in 2003. Multiple women, including a former co-worker at the IMF, have spoken openly about how they felt pressured or coerced into having sex with him, how he was known for being extremely aggressive. One ex-girlfriend who was interviewed in L’Illustrespilled details of their relationship, which she says ended with ripped clothes, physical injury and a suicide attempt on her part. She also said she was not surprised by Diallo’s story of being attacked by DSK because it’s consistent with “who he is.”

DSK’s treatment of women was loudly openly decried in the press, even as they covered the collapse of the charges against him, and that provided some vindication for his victims.

“Vocation is the place where your greatest gifts meet the world’s greatest suffering.” – Frederick Beucher

I caught this article over at On The Issue Magazine; it argues against the importance that many in the queer community have placed on repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

Considering how unpopular the current wars are, I question why the right to serve openly in the military is at the forefront of LGBT activism. Why are gays and lesbians eager to join an institution that has traditionally upheld the rigid gender roles against which the LGBT movement has been rebelling? Why seek membership in an institution that takes advantage of the poor to fight battles that serve the goals of the elite? And what of the civilians whose rights are infringed and cast aside by a U.S. invasion? – are we trading their civil rights for our own?

I have a lot of concerns with this article. My primary issue is the way that the author seems to be arguing that there is only one way to be gay. The kind of “gay” (or QUILTBAG) person who conforms to all of the culturally-defined characteristics of the queer community. Call me crazy, but that seems about as as rigid as boot camp.

Being part eleven of the Live-Blogging Feminism For Real series. For the rest of the series, click on the series tag. For a full explanation of the series, see part one.

Confession time: There were a few years in my early college career when I thought all porn was evil. I thought this for a complex set of reasons including how I was defining porn (for example I didn’t count the erotica I was reading or writing at the time as “porn”), how I’d heard porn talked about growing up, and the discussions of pornography that happened in my women’s studies classes (brief and embarrassed). I also happened, at some point in adolescence, to pick up an anthology of essays by Catharine McKinnon, one of the leading anti-pornography feminist legal scholars of the 1980s.

Don’t get me wrong: I didn’t grow up in a household where sexuality was shameful. But I grew up in a home where “pornography” (never very clearly defined) was something other than sex, and lived in a culture that reinforced the porn = bad equation continually. When you grow up thinking that sexually-arousing materials have a negative effect on sexual relationships, and then encounter feminist writers who argue that in addition to that they’re also a form of violence against women then, well, it’s pretty easy to have an unexamined bias against porn.

True story: I remember my first year in college I went to hear an ex-gay preacher speak (long story but to be clear I was there in protest) and one of his arguments was that romance novels were for women what porn was for men (i.e. harmful to “healthy” relationships). I was outraged that he would equate erotic narratives with “porn” … without ever stopping to examine why I thought erotica was distinct from porn and, even if so, why porn was horrible to start with. I probably should have stopped to think about this the second I heard someone actively anti-gay also being anti-porn. There’s a point at which your bedfellows should really make you stop and take a second look at your ideological choices.

I’m long past the era when I thought porn was categorically eeeevil. But I always think of this history when I read current material on sex work and feminism - like this week’s installment in the Feminism For Real series: anna Saini’s conversation with Jessica Yee about the relationship of sex work and academic feminism. Mostly because it reminds me how “common sense” our assumptions can be when it comes to the intersection of sex and commerce … and how self-identified feminists are just as likely to be making those assumptions as anyone else.

I blogged about the election not too long ago, and most will remember my absolute love and respect for Jack Layton. He brought his party to a new high, becoming Official Opposition, shattering a record number or seats and breaking through in a province that is notoriously hard to break.

Today, Jack Layton lost his battle with cancer at age 61. I’d be lying if I said that this doesn’t hurt. Many of us across the country are feeling it and there are so many things that will be missed. He was the kind of progressive that this country needed, and it’s hard to think that anyone would be able to fill his shoes.

This is really hard to write for me, so I’ll leave it to Jack Layton himself, in a letter he released shortly before his death.

I wanted to share and discuss a link to a post by fellow feminist blogger Oh Hells Nah called: ”When Women Hate Women: An Abuelita Story.” It’s a very personal story that’s loaded with feminist and cultural flashpoints, and begins;

My maternal grandmother was very cruel to me when I was growing up. To this day, I’m not sure why, but I can only speculate that most of it was due to deep-seated misogyny. She didn’t mistreat any male grandchildren that I know of. In fact, she very obviously favored them. (Thanks, machismo.) There was something about me, however, that she really hated….

Over the years, I’ve tried to forgive her for my own well-being. Though I don’t love her and know I never will, I’ve tried to understand why she was so bitter and why she took it out on me.

Her analysis of the hows and whys of her grandmother’s toxicity ultimately concludes:

I can rationalize and intellectualize the situation all I want— look at it through a socioeconomic lens, see in a feminist context — but it still bothers me more than I’d like to admit.

The post really struck a chord with me, because like Oh Hells Nah, my grandmother liked making cutting observations about my weight, my hair, my clothes, and anything else that occurred to her. To be fair, no one was safe from her criticism, usually delivered with zero regard as to how hurtful it was.

So, back to Doctor Who. I’ve considered a lot of things for this post and, while I’m still working on the companions piece in my head as I walk to and from work, I know I’ve got lots of recs for folks looking for a way either to hook their friends or get into the groove themselves.

To start with, here’s post A: “Episodes With Which to Hook Your Friends.” New series today; old series to come.

Rose and the Doctor.

Rose (2005; Season 1, Episode 1). It starts the new series; it starts it with a bang; it starts with Christopher freakin’ Eccleston, okay? (and his jumper.) I feel that the Nestene are an odd choice for a monster, but that’s only if you remember them from the old series and have this vague sense that they should all be toting around daffodils in this weird flower power parody. Rose is nice, clean, well-paced storytelling. There’s no need to know anything about the series going in because it’s all explained for you: the Doctor is the Doctor; there are aliens; the TARDIS is bigger on the inside. There you go. All in a nice neat 40-minute package. There’s also Rose (Billie Piper) before she goes all dreadful, and Mickey (Noel Clarke) before being dubbed Mickey the Idiot, and Jackie Tyler (Camille Coduri), Rose’s mother, who is eminently write-offable in her first few episodes — but don’t do it. Seize on to Jackie. You’ll be glad to did.

Human Nature/Family of Blood (2007; 3.8-9). This is a season 3 two-parter and is a choice I debated about. I think it would still work well as an introduction, but it would be most logical if you knew a little something about the show going in: like, not much, but maybe roughly who the Doctor is, what the companion’s role is (and who she is), and maybe a bit about how Time Lords work. But even if you don’t know any of that — this two-parter is an attention-grabber. The Doctor isn’t really the Doctor (for a wide variety of reasons); there’s a very Boy’s Own Paper-boarding school; and some extremely nasty scarecrows. Martha Jones (Freema Ageyman), the companion of the hour, gets to be totally kickass, and there are some wonderful secondary characters: the Family of Blood themselves, particularly Son of Mine (Harry Lloyd); Timothy Latimer (Thomas Brodie-Sangster who also did a great turn as Liam Neeson’s stepson in Love Actually); and Joan Redfern (Jessica Hynes), matron of the boarding school. There is one of the best (hands-down) monologues in the entire new series so far at the end of the second episode and you may want to have some tissues on hand. Just sayin’.

Being part ten of the Live-Blogging Feminism For Real series. For the rest of the series, click on the series tag. For a full explanation of the series, see part one.

Better late than never, I suppose … it’s funny how some weeks there just seems to be no time at all for blogging.

We’ve been having conversations in my circle of friends lately about the difference between experiential knowledge and knowledge based on scholarship and research, and how these two types of knowing relate to one another. Historically, as a culture, the modern West has privileged the latter (scholarly) over the former (experiential). In recent decades — thanks, in great part, to various human rights movements (feminism, anti-imperialism, anti-racism, gay rights, disability awareness, etc., etc., etc.)! — we’ve started to acknowledge the importance of experiential knowledge in some arenas, though it still often plays second fiddle to “the experts” and/or the voices of people in power. We still position these two types of knowledge in opposition to one another, with scholarly knowledge still associated with power-over (particularly in the experience of marginalized populations) and experiential knowledge as “emotive,” “feminine,” “subjective” and biased.* As a response, we often push back against that type of analysis by asserting that only the voices of those with experiential knowledge “count,” or should count the most — i.e. that only women have the ability to speak with authority on feminist subjects.

Yet this antagonism is hardly a workable long-term solution, since (among other reasons) many people with experiential learning also have scholarly, analytic knowledge about their subject: I experienced counter-culture education as a youngster and then studied the theory and history of alternative education as a college and graduate student. The experience itself was invaluable, but the scholarship about the experience was what helped me make sense of what I had lived through. The two complemented, rather than opposed, one another.**

I was thinking about this tangle while reading Megan Lee’s ” ‘Maybe I’m Not Class-Mobile; Maybe I’m Class-Queer’: Poor kids in college and survival under hierarchy” for this week’s live-blog installment. Lee’s contribution to Feminism For Real is a meditation on “the ways that university works as a mechanism to perpetuate the class hierarchy” (85) and on the resistance by those who benefit from that hierarchy to fully examine and deconstruct those mechanisms.